Regional Unemployment Disparities: An Evaluation of Policy Measures

This paper analyses the efficacy of regional and federal government policies in reducing inter-regional unemployment disparities. We use as our framework a two-region general equilibrium model with a given freely-mobile supply of labour. We assume interregional migration to occur in response to inter-regional utility differentials. Each region has households, firms and a regional government. In addition to regional governments, there is a federal government. The firms in a region use a single factor, labour, to produce a single good which we assume to be different to that produced in the other region. It is supplied to households and to the regional government in the form of payroll taxes. Households consume some, trade some with households in the other region and give some up to the federal government as income tax. Firms and households bargain over wages and firms then choose employment to maximise profits. The resulting equilibrium will generally not be a full-employment one. We simulate a linearised numerical version of the model. We examine seven alternative policies, six carried out by a regional government and one by the federal government. In the first group there are traditional tax/expenditure polices as well as policies which might be seen as attacking the natural rate of unemployment: changes in unemployment benefits, changes in union power, changes in the labour force and changes in labour productivity. The federal government policy is a regionally- differentiated fiscal policy. Contrary to expectations, many policies which have traditionally been recommended to alleviate unemployment, are found, in fact, to exacerbate the unemployment problem.

The Trans-Contextual Model of Autonomous Motivation in Education: Conceptual and Empirical Issues and Meta-Analysis.

The trans-contextual model outlines the processes by which autonomous motivation toward activities in a physical education context predicts autonomous motivation toward physical activity outside of school, and beliefs about, intentions toward, and actual engagement in, out-of-school physical activity. In the present article, we clarify the fundamental propositions of the model and resolve some outstanding conceptual issues, including its generalizability across multiple educational domains, criteria for its rejection or failed replication, the role of belief-based antecedents of intentions, and the causal ordering of its constructs. We also evaluate the consistency of model relationships in previous tests of the model using path-analytic meta-analysis. The analysis supported model hypotheses but identified substantial heterogeneity in the hypothesized relationships across studies unattributed to sampling and measurement error. Based on our meta-analysis, future research needs to provide further replications of the model in diverse educational settings beyond physical education and test model hypotheses using experimental methods

The Regional Economic Effects of Immigration

The effects of immigration on the host country are pervasive and long-term. It is not surprising that they have been extensively analysed, not least the economic effects which have been the subject of both theoretical and empirical research. While some of the empirical research has had a regional dimension, this has often been incidental to the analysis of the labour market – the effects of immigration on wages and employment prospects of the native-born depend on the regional migration response. In contrast, there has been little analysis of the general effects of immigration on regional economies per se. This paper contributes to the filling of this gap by constructing a small two-region computable general-equilibrium (CGE) model which is used to analyse the effects of various immigration shocks on regional variables such as output, employment, the labour force, unemployment, wages and welfare. We simulate the effects of different types of immigration shocks and distinguish between short-run and long-run effects. We also consider the effectiveness of government intervention designed to alleviate the adverse regional effects of immigration including the possibility that regional governments behave in a welfare-maximising way.immigration, regional, labour market

An Analysis of the Effects of Fiscal Equalisation in a Two-Region Simulation Model

This paper is concerned primarily with the economic and welfare consequences of federal redistributive grants. We use a model which has two regions, each with households, firms and regional governments as well as a federal government. The households, firms and regional governments are all optimizers – households maximize utility, firms maximize profits and we assume that regional governments are empire-builders in that they choose their expenditure and tax levels so as to maximise total expenditure – the size of their empire. Labour is free to move between regions in response to utility differences and does so until such differences have been eliminated. Inter-regional migration, interregional trade flows and federal government redistribution are the main sources of interconnectedness between the two regions. The model is linearised in log-differences and simulated using a calibration based on Australian state-level data. We find that the welfare effect of intergovernmental transfers is trivial but that all other variables of interest change substantially – consumption, employment, prices, taxes, wages, output and government expenditure. Finally, the signs of the effects of a federal transfer are not affected by the empire-building behaviour of regional governments although the magnitude of the effects is generally dampened.

Predicting Alcohol Pre-Drinking in Australian Undergraduate Students Using an Integrated Theoretical Model

Background: The aim of the present study was to examine the social-cognitive and motivational factors associated with pre-drinking based on a model integrating motivational constructs from self-determination theory and belief-based constructs from the theory of planned behaviour. Methods: A prospective correlational design was used. Participants (N = 286; 66.4% female) completed self-report measures of past alcohol consumption, autonomous and controlled forms of motivation from self-determination theory, and attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and behavioural intentions from the theory of planned behaviour at baseline. Participants reported pre-drinking frequency four weeks later. Results: Variance-based structural equation modelling showed that the hypothesised model predicted 54 per cent of the variance in pre-drinking intentions at baseline, and 20 per cent of the variance in pre-drinking behaviour at follow-up. Mediation analyses indicated strong, statistically significant effects of autonomous motivation on intentions to pre-drink, partially mediated by attitudes and subjective norms. Intention and perceived behavioural control significantly predicted pre-drinking frequency. Conclusions: Results provide support for the hypothesised model relationships. Autonomous motivation, attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control were influential in forming students' intentions to pre-drink. However, consistent with previous findings, the intention-behaviour relationship was relatively weak. Future research should look to non-intentional and volitional processes that may influence pre-drinking in undergraduates